Moved

http://lohwenjie84.wordpress.com/

No Bottom in Sight

Illustration courtesy of "The Economist".

Lust

Clad in a gossamer like loin cloth, Mohatma Ghandi, a frail little man wielding only his believe in the truth, whom Winston Churchil called a half naked faker, by many accounts can be regarded as the epitomy of courage, peace, love and spirituality.

But little did we know that while growing up, he was a lustful young boy. (Guys, feeling vindicated??haha..)

He was so lustful that he was busy having sex with her wife and missed the dying words of his father.

"This shame of my carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father's death... is a blot I have never been able to efface or forget, and I have always thought that although my devotion to my parents knew no bounds... yet it was weighed and found unpardonably wanting because my mind was at the same moment in the grip of lust. I have therefore regarded myself as lustful, though a faithful husband. It took me long to get free from the shackles of lust, and I had to pass through many ordeals before i could ovecome it."

But it was what he did to transform his lustful desire into spiritual energy that made him trully the Great Soul (Mohatma).

"What then, I asked myself, should be my relations with my wife? Did my faithfulness consist in making my wife the instrument of lust? So long as I was the slave of lust, my faithfulness was worth nothing. To be fair to my wife I must say she was never the temptress....it was my weak will or lustful attachment that was the obstacle. "

In the later years of his life to come, he took on the vow of celibacy.

In taking the vow of celibacy, he had purified his love for his wife, distilling all lust, as his faithfullness did not consist a sliver of temptation anymore. His celibacy made him a better lover. It was not a mere act of physical abstinance, but transcended it at all levels. He had spiritualized lust. He was the Great Soul.

A Spinning Die

Once dubbed "the Maestro", Alan Greenspan, the one time Fed Reserve Supremo, famed for his deft handling of issues, has seen his reputation tumble like the punched-drunk equity market lately.

As the markets suffer more bloodletting, the dramatic unfolding of events in recent months has seen the unmaking of his(Alan Greenspan) reputation become even more precipitous.

Now at the age of 82, there dont seem to be much time left for him to salvage his reputation.

"The world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel, and angel into man, and the head into the foot, and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things."

Martin Buber

Such is the impermanence of things.